


The Memory of Embers

by Porgalicious (Vyranai)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, And Ben's eyes take the brunt of the explosion, Blindness, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Oneshot, The Raddus hits the ship, The lightsaber explodes, angsty ben is angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 08:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15239190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vyranai/pseuds/Porgalicious
Summary: The lightsaber explodes and Kylo Ren discovers a new type of darkness. Fortunately, he's not alone in facing it.--Or, Ben gets blinded by the lightsaber explosion and Rey helps him deal with it and his demons.





	The Memory of Embers

**Author's Note:**

> I blame my lovely friend [ Ara](http://calm-yourself-kylo.tumblr.com) for this. For you, my evil partner in crime!
> 
> This was posted last night at like... 5am, but I woke up and saw the amount of errors and stuff and it needed a repost. So tada! This will be a oneshot unless folks would like more?

The embers floating down from the ruined drapes looked like stars when Rey opened her eyes and turned them skywards. She reached out, still in a daze and the noise of the explosion ringing loudly in her ears, but could not touch them. For a second she merely lay there, arm outstretched and brain still rushing to come to terms with what had happened.

A lightsaber.

Two souls fighting furiously to claim it.

A colossal explosion.

Rey rolled onto her side with a soft groan, eyes falling on the shattered remains of the old lightsaber. All at once it came back to her.

Oh.

Slowly, carefully, she drew the pieces close and into her chest, simply holding them against her heart. There was nothing there no more; no heart in the weapon. It was dead, shattered beyond repair. Now neither of them would claim the legacy it once held.

Ben lay in a charred heap not too far away from when Rey pulled herself to her feet, shattered remains tight in her grip. He was on his side Force signature wavering and flickering like a distant star. Rey attempted to focus on the man, but it was simply impossible with the darkness coalescing within and around him. But there was something else, too.

Something  _wrong._

She should have fled, Rey reasoned as she carefully picked her way through the flaming debris. Dove onto the shuttle just beyond her location and left him there to burn. But something made her feet carry her onwards to his side. “Ben?” Rey bent down over him, placing the fragments down so she could heave the hulking man onto his back with a grunt of effort. His eyes were closed, the pale eyelids an angry red beneath. The scar she’d placed upon his face was stark in contrast to the amber of the burning room.

All at once, fear and confusion exploded through the Force, almost throwing Rey back as the shockwaves hit her and he came to with the choke of smoke in his lungs. Rather than rise to his feet, Ben pulled himself into a sitting position, still coughing the acrid haze out.

Then Ben stilled and the fear grew to such a terrible peak that Rey felt it bleeding into their connection; terror like ice slipped down her spine, not all of it her own. “Are you hurt-?” Rey blurted out, half reaching out to touch him but drawing back at the last moment. Bad things tended to happen when they touched, after all.

“No.” It was so soft that she barely heard it. “No.  _No-!_ ” He threw out a hand and Rey dived out of the way, barely missing the lightsaber as it found Ben’s palm and came to life in a blaze of crimson, crackling and spitting as he swung it violently in a wide arc with a roar to match.

Rey yelped, calling upon her own blade, but it was pieces in her hand when they arrived. Useless. Nothing against his onslaught of wild slashes.

He didn’t attack her directly, which Rey found extremely odd; one moment he’d turn in a wide and spiralling circle with his saber rending the air, then delving deep into the floor near his feet; the crossguard of the hilt grazed his thigh and he yelled, the blade jerking sharply and forcing him down onto one knee.

Something was very wrong. “Ben? Calm down! You’re going to stab yourself!”

“Give it back,” he snarled, turning to face her on unsteady feet and breathing shaky.

“Wh-?”

He raised the blade, just slightly off his mark. “Give it  _back!_ ” Ben slashed at the ground, leaving a deep groove between them, roaring his words yet again as he rose back to his feet and advanced with a single, unsteady step.

The lightsaber? “It’s… broken. Cleanly.”

“Fix it,” he hissed, the crimson blade rising once more. “Fix it  _now!_ ”

“I can’t! The lightsaber split! Ben, what-?”

“Saber?” he muttered, frowning deeply for a moment before shaking his head. “My eyes, Rey. I cannot  _see-!_ End this Force trickery before I run you clean through!”

Oh.

Shit-!

He was… he was…

“I haven’t done anything to your eyes, Ben, I swear! The blast… it must have…” Rey took a tentative, careful step closer, hardly daring to breathe as she reached out a hand for the twisted red blade. Swallowing hard, she rammed into Ben’s arm and sent the saber flying through the air. Before it could hit the ground or Ben summon it, Rey caught it by the hilt and held on tight. “Don’t!” she warned as Ben’s hand shot out. “You’ll just end up killing the both of us with that kriffing crossguard!” She deactivated it as quickly as possible, the furious red vanishing.

A muscle feathered in his jaw and slowly, the hand fell back to his side. “What now?” Ben demanded, looking around and blinking hard as if he could dispel the darkness he saw. It didn’t work. “What happened? The Force… the ship has stopped working, the engine is dead.”

Rey glanced out of the window and caught sight of the wreckage that was the ship; the wing seemed to be detached, fires erupting even now. What had happened, exactly-? “Ben, the ship is in half.”

“What?”

“The ship is split! We are falling into the abyss of space! We need to get out of here before… the shields fall, the air-”

“We? There is no  _we,_ little Jedi. You made that quite clear when you refused my hand!” Her refusal still stung. If only she’d accepted… all of this could have been avoided.

“You are bli-”

“I am  _not-!_ ” Ben roared before she could complete her sentence, swiping with a hand in her general direction and missing by miles. “I am not.”

Rey caught his wrist and held it fast against his resistance. “Think about it; you stay here like this, you’re useless. They will dispose of you now that Snoke is dead, and you won’t see them coming. Literally. It might be today, it might be tomorrow, but they  _will_. And you know it.”

The man stilled. He didn’t want to admit it, Rey could tell, but… she was right. And he had to realize that. “Then what do you propose?”

“Come with  _me._ ”

The irony was not lost on Ben; he smirked. “Really?”

“Really.” Rey slipped her hand into his own and squeezed tightly. “We are getting out of here. Now.”

“You mean you’re dragging me to the Resistance. To the hangman’s noose.”  

Rey couldn’t fail to hear the bitterness in his tone, the subliminal fury running deep. She gripped him tighter, shaking her head even though he couldn’t see it. “No. First I am dragging you onto this ship, and then I am dragging you away from all this. You don’t belong in this place, Ben. Neither of us does. This fight… the whole First Order…”

“You’re leaving it behind?”

“I’m not, in fact. I’m just removing you from this equation while we deal with your… eyes.”

Ben pulled suddenly, yanking Rey into his chest with a hard  _thump._ His lips brushed against the line of her forehead, thumb tracing a circle across the back of her hand _._ “You’re wasting your time, Rey; I cannot turn.”

Rey looked up, gazing into his eyes; they didn’t seem at all different from the warm whisky coloured ones she’d met before, only the glazed over look and redness around the edges proof of his lack of sight. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t.”

“We’ll see, Ben. Now come on, we need to go before someone comes up here.”

 

Escaping was simple enough. Rey kept a tight hold of Ben with one hand, gripping his saber and her ruined own with the other. When they reached the ship, she led him through to the cockpit and deposited him down into the seat next to the pilot’s and proceeded with disembarking as fast as she could.

“I can see you,” Ben said after a few minutes, turning his head towards her. “Nothing clear, but an outline.”

“Nothing else? What about the ship?”

“Just you. Just the Force surrounding you. You’re so bright, like a star against the expanse of space.”

That was… good, Rey supposed. Except the fact that he could most likely see his saber also if he concentrated enough. Suddenly she was thankful for having left it in the back, far away enough that he couldn’t summon it directly. Though she doubted that he would; she was his guide at present. To kill her would not be advantageous.

Rey set the shuttle down upon the mineral planet below and warned Ben not to wander before calling Chewie to come and pick her up. “I’ll be back,” she told him as she walked down the ship. “Ben, I swear it.”

“You’re still calling me Ben? After everything?”

“Yes. Because I like Ben. He killed Snoke, not Kylo. Ben was the one who fought at my side, not Kylo.”

Ben didn’t reply. He merely listened as the doors opened and then slammed shut, leaving him alone in the ship.

 

Ben considered the worst part of his current predicament the timekeeping. Had ten minutes passed? Had an hour? Either way, Ben couldn’t tell. It was maddening, utterly frustrating. Numerous times he rose to his feet and reached out for his lightsaber, pulling with all his might. Nothing answered him. Nothing shone in the sea of darkness that lay before him. Rey had taken it with her, because of course she had.

Then he discovered the panic he had suppressed in the throne room, the fear and confusion at his situation. Breathing ragged, Ben raised a hand and waved it before his eyes at various distances, desperately seeking a shape of some form or another.  _Anything_  at all.

There was nothing. He was alone again. Alone in another type of darkness. Alone in another of his own making.  

Perhaps Rey would just leave him there. He wouldn’t blame her. Or she’d take a step back and allow his mother’s Rebels to mete out their own judgement upon him. But… no; her heart was soft and her soul light. She would never condone such brutality.

His mother, however… what would she do upon facing her monster of a son once more? The man who had killed her husband? Would there be mercy, or was all the Princess’ forgiveness gone, scattered to the winds along with his father’s remains in deep space?

There was a strange silence to the Force now, a stillness that he could never recall ever feeling before. An effect of Snoke’s death, Ben supposed. There was a huge power vacuum in the Force now, after all. His thoughts were clear and safe, his own to keep. There is no dark master there to poke and prod, to humiliate him and force him into complying.

He can  _breathe_ once more.

Snoke had been there his entire life. At every milestone and journey, speaking in hushed whispers into his ear. Just how much power  _had_  he exerted over him, exactly? Ben wasn’t sure anymore. He felt almost whole and himself, not a shadow wraith or Knight of Ren.

Who was he now? Not light, he could never be that. But Ben wasn’t entirely sure if he could call himself wholly dark anymore. Rey had touched something deep within him and had begun to chip away at it, causing hairline cracks that grew and threatened to shatter entirely. It… frightened him more than he’d care to admit.

No, being alone with his thoughts was the most terrifying part of this. Ben could not even find it in himself to meditate. There was no peace, not in the Light and not in the Dark. There was only silence and stillness, the sound of his own breathing and the soft clunks and clatter of the ship as it settled beneath him.

Rey would return. She had to.

Ben closed his eyes and waited. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments make a writer super duper happy.


End file.
